


i'm not a religious person, but

by MidwesternDuchess



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, I looked at a canon map of Fodlan exactly once while writing this and promptly said 'fuck you' so, M because Hilda swears a lot and like people are being murdered, M/M, absolutely noooOOOOOooo romance between Hil and Dima, an excuse to write something fun and silly and maybe accidentally tender, background dimiclaude, canon has been slow roasted etc etc, the goneril-blaiddyd roadtrip nobody asked for, time and distance Have No Power Here
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:07:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26296894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidwesternDuchess/pseuds/MidwesternDuchess
Summary: “We’re not going to make it past Varly with you looking like—” here Hilda gestures vaguely but with immense feeling at Dimitri’s entire person. “I’ve seen corpses that look better than you, your Highness.”Dimitri just keeps his one eye fixed far, far away.“Perhaps that is because I am already as good as dead myself,” he rasps, in that same hoarse, creaking voice from before, and Hildagroans—loud and long and going shrill at the end as all her frustration boils over—slapping her hands to her face like its in danger of falling off. It might as well. Just that kind of fucking day.“Dimitri,” she says, through her fingers, “if you don’t shut the fuck up aboutbasically being dead,I am actually going to kill you.”Or:Hilda saves Dimitri at Gronder Field, which is all well and good, except he’s half-mad and they’re, like, a hundred thousand miles away from Alliance territory. So it’s actually not well or good at all, is what she’s saying.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Hilda Valentine Goneril, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 12
Kudos: 92





	i'm not a religious person, but

Hilda feels kind of bad about it, but she’d actually completely forgotten that Prince Dimitri, like, _existed._

Which is just as well, because she catches one glimpse of him during the absolute _sensation_ of a shit show that is the Battle of Gronder Field—tearing through Imperial frontlines like a fucking _monster,_ cloaked in an enormous fur mantle and actually literally _snarling—_ and she sort of gets the impression that Prince Dimitri may have also, possibly, forgotten who Prince Dimitri is, so she maybe doesn’t feel all that bad, in hindsight.

Claude, however—in classic _I’ll hatch a brilliant plan and then promptly fuck it up myself_ Claude fashion—had definitely _not_ forgotten Prince Dimitri existed, which Hilda knows because a) she’d spent too many morning lectures covering for Claude to _not_ know where he spent his nights at Garreg Mach and b) she watches his face do a series of very complicated and increasingly tragic gymnastics when he lays eyes on his wayward Kingdom Prince for the first time in five years from across Gronder.

“Oh Goddess,” says Hilda, aloud, to absolutely nobody because she’s already strayed too far from her battalion for comfort, but she’d seen Petra moving across the field with all the fluid lethality of a fucking career assassin—which, Hilda guesses she is, they _all_ kind of are, really, which is actually pretty depressing—with her eyes set on Igntaz and _that_ wasn’t happening, thanks very much, Princess Petra.

She hadn’t killed Petra, but she’d _tried—_ really, she hadn’t pulled a single swing, had aimed for all the weak points, had put in the Goddess-damned _effort_ —because Dorothea had appeared out of absolutely fucking _nowhere—_ no, really, honestly, how do the Eagles just _do_ that?—to throw herself between Petra and Hilda, pale hands flashing desperately as she’d carved a shielding rune out of thin air, and Hilda’s last downward swing had thrown sparks when it hit, Freikugel shrieking like a wounded fucking animal as she’d dragged it harmlessly against Dorothea’s stupid little spell because, like, fucking _magic,_ that’s why.

Hilda, for the record—several records, actually, if they win this war she’s going to make Claude build her a big ugly statue honoring this very specific thing _—hates_ magic.

 _“Fuck you,”_ Hilda had spat, while Dorothea just glared at her through the shimmer of her shield, hands still splayed out to hold the rune in place. Petra had hovered over her shoulder, eyes burning with the desire to like, rip Hilda’s arms off, probably. That’s what Hilda had been trying to communicate through her own eyes, anyway. _“Fuck you for attacking the Monastery—fuck you for ever acting like my fucking **friend.”**_

 _“Fuck **you!”**_ Dorothea had snarled back, like they’re literal shithead teenagers again and not, like, full-on twentysomething Generals in their respective armies. It might have been a little funny if not for the fact that Hilda really—like, in her _bones—_ wanted to just absolutely bury everything and anything in her immediate radius wearing a Goddess-damned _eagle._

And then they’d pulled the fucking vanishing act—and _Saints_ was that ever fucking getting _old—_ and Hilda had stood alone a thousand paces away from where Claude had told her to _not fucking move from, Hil, I’m serious_ with a fury burning her up inside and no one to swing her axe at. Trying times, all around.

So Petra is alive, but so is Igntaz, so Hilda’s willing to call it a draw, all things considered, and is about to trot back to her battalion and try to remember what _skulls_ are supposed to feel like because hers is still rattling around from her impact against Dorothea’s shield when she spots Claude’s wyvern dipping out of the clouds—so far out of formation she wants to throw up a leg and _beat_ him with it—eyes zeroed in on a hulking figure in blue that Hilda had been, like, tangentially aware of but also had very much deemed _someone else’s problem._

“Don’t you fucking _dare,_ Claude,” Hilda hisses—again, to no one’s benefit, she’s picking up her Duke’s habit of thinking out loud, how unfashionable—and actually _runs,_ the fucking horror, back to where her battalion has grouped loosely with Lysithea, because the only real order Hilda has ever given them is, _“if you can’t find me for Flames’ sake find the little murder goblin and just stab at whatever she points to.”_

“Who _is_ that?” Hilda shouts—unnecessary, she’s practically on top of Lysithea as she steps in to cover her, Freikugel angled just so to keep the flat of a Black Eagles blade off of Lysithea’s pale, tiny, incredibly sliceable neck.

Lysithea huffs all big and dramatic like as she ducks under Hilda’s arm to let loose a horrifying bolt of dark energy that pierces the breastplate of an Imperial soldier Hilda hadn’t noticed. In Hilda’s defense there are, like, a _lot_ of Imperial soldiers hanging around, currently. It’s not like she can kill _all_ of them.

“That’s _Prince Dimitri,”_ Lys says back, in the exact tone she used to pull when correcting someone’s answer in class—somewhere between highhanded and long-suffering. The soldier crumples with a shrieking wail as Lysithea’s black magic completely devours him from inside his own armor. Lys looks over her shoulder at Hilda, lifts an eyebrow. _“Duh.”_

Hilda looks. And looks again. Sees the flash of a lance and a shock of blond hair. Stares as a Crest she only recognizes because she watched Claude doodle it in his fucking notes over and over and over again a hundred times blooms to life in the sky—shimmery and shiny and ethereal the way Crests are when they manifest—as he strikes a fortress knight in full armor so hard his spear goes all the way fucking through.

The analogy of a knife through butter comes to mind. Hilda kinda wants to puke.

“See?” Lys says, irritable as she fusses with sleeve of her shirt like nothing about this is bad or weird or terrifying, but then Hilda guesses the girl who casts flesh-eating magic might have a different scale for what’s bad and weird and terrifying. “Prince Dimitri.”

And so it fucking is.

“Flames fucking take me,” says Hilda, low, because Claude plans for a lot of things, has backups for his backups, can and will pull victories out of his literal _ass,_ but she sort of gets the feeling that he doesn’t have a card to play against the old _your dead lover is not actually dead but is also definitely Not Well and is maybe fighting a war against you_ scenario.

“You need to get to Claude,” Lys says as she begins moving away, probably to the next place she’s been ordered to go because she’s actually a good and responsible soldier. “If he dies over Dimitri I’m going to kill him.”

Hilda says, “He’s _supposed_ to be dead,” and somehow manages to sound kind of whiny about it, which is dumb because Hilda didn’t necessarily _want_ Dimitri dead and had spent the weeks following the news of his execution at the side of a stiff and listless and horrifyingly empty Claude, so there’s that. She cranes her neck to squint up at the sky and watch as a wyvern comes soaring towards them—not Claude’s pure-white Silver, so either it’s Cyril and the only other wyvern in Fódlan, currently, or somehow the Empire or Kingdom got their hands on one of them and at that point, like, fuck it. Hilda’s out. She’s not gonna fight those things, are you joking?

Cyril’s wyvern lands with a _whump_ that shakes the earth, and Hilda scrambles over to meet him while Lysithea snarks, _“oh, sure, don’t worry, just land out in the open,”_ but throws a shielding charm over them anyway to keep them from getting absolutely rocked by a ballista because she’s thoughtful like that.

“Lady Goneril,” says Cyril, because he’s watched Claude and Marianne hold Hilda’s hair back as she vomits up her attempts to drink the rowdiest Alliance soldiers under the table but still calls her a _Lady,_ “Claude says—”

“I don’t _give_ a fuck what Claude says,” Hilda snaps back, which is always at least a little true but especially now as he’s literally flying straight into mortal fucking danger as fast as his wyvern will take him. A ballista bolt comes sailing towards them but splinters on impact as it hits the invisible shield shimmering around them. Cyril’s wyvern doesn’t even blink. _“You_ tell Claude that—”

She hesitates—Cyril holds still in his saddle, waiting for her to make up her damn mind as Lys bark at them both to _get a Goddess-damned **move** on_—before she forces what just might be her fakest smile yet. Bright and perfect and definitely a little bloody from a split lip.

“Tell him his old friend Hilda’s got this covered.”

Cyril nods like that makes any fucking sense—Hilda and Claude have developed a very complicated and deeply stupid code over the years, and Cyril has long-since learned not to bat an eye at any ridiculous message they give him, even when it’s, like, complete horseshit and not even a message at all and they just say the dirtiest thing they can think of to try and make him blush—and urges his wyvern back to the sky.

“Prince Dimitri is headed for Edelgard,” says Lys, as if Hilda could actually fucking miss the path of destruction and violence being carved across the battlefield. “Claude’s probably going to try and head him off.”

But Hilda knows better. “Claude’s going to join in,” she says, watching as Claude urges Silver into one of those death-defying spirals that are absolutely going to send Lorenz into an early grave out of anxiety. “He thinks he can save Dimitri and talk sense into Edelgard at the same time.”

Lys actually scoffs, so Hilda can kind of guess how she likes his odds. And like—Hilda’s seen Claude do a number of things she thinks most people would comfortably call _impossible_ on the regular but _fuck._ Edelgard’s no fucking joke, and from this distance, Hilda can’t tell if Dimitri’s even willing to be a team player. He doesn’t even look like he knows what team he’s _on—_ the Lions are in complete disarray across the battlefield.

Not that Hilda has any room to talk about that, specifically, but still.

“Gotta get closer,” Hilda decides, like it’s as easy as that. She glances back at the head of her battalion, a very nice older woman named Lucille with a wicked scar who allegedly once escaped an Imperial prison by garrote wiring her guard with her fucking bootlaces, a story which the retelling of had made Ignatz choke on his drink and Leonie cheer wildly, so, you know. Takes all kinds.

Lucille lifts an eyebrow. “Orders?” she drawls, like Hilda has ever or will ever say anything intelligent on a fucking battlefield.

“Stick with Lysithea,” Hilda says, only narrowly avoiding calling her _the kid,_ a nickname that has been publicly banned under pain of death by Lysithea herself but everyone still uses when she’s not around to kill them for it. She tips a wink. “I’ll be back.”

Lucille just shrugs which like—she gets paid either way, Hilda kinda gets it, respect the hustle—and turns back to relay this to the rest of the battalion while Hilda goes running off again—and really, this running thing, _fuck_ was Claude ever going to get an earful over all the running she’s doing for him—pausing only to pull a hatchet off her belt and whip it a few yards away at Caspar’s fucking head where he and his battalion had been crowding Ashe into a corner. She doesn’t feel strongly about Ashe one way or the other—he wasn’t a Deer and he never offered to do her chores for her so, like, what’s the point—but Caspar is an Eagle and she’d rather put him in the ground than Ashe, so she lets her axe fly.

Ashe sees it coming—he’s got an archer’s eye, she’ll give him that—and as Hilda takes one last look she sees him grab Caspar’s arm and haul him out of the way, letting her hatchet go pin-wheeling past to decapitate some other poor bastard she hadn’t been aiming for. Ashe doesn’t adjust to accommodate Caspar’s sudden closeness and suddenly the two are getting extremely cozy in the middle of Gronder fucking Field.

Like. Like _real_ cozy. Huh.

Okay, so, maybe _everyone’s_ reuniting with their secret, presumed dead lovers from their Academy days. Good. Great. Grand. Hilda’s _so happy_ for them, really—she’ll make them all traditional ugly wedding garlands later once they’ve put Edelgard’s head on a fucking pike for starting this war.

She skirts her way around a few more fights—Felix and Annette are dueling with Hubert, which is somehow still a very fair fight because Hubert’s a literal fucking _lunatic_ who is holding his own against both of them without breaking a sweat. Leonie and Ingrid can’t seem to decide if they’re going to kill each other or not, and Hilda watches their pegasi weave in and out of the cloudline, lances flashing but never actually taking a swing. Maybe they’re just keeping each other in check? Hilda hasn’t ridden a horse since she was made to once—and _only_ once—back at the Academy. She doesn’t know what they fucking do.

Speaking of.

 _“Lorenz!”_ Hilda shrieks, once she’s finally close enough to scream at him and not alert every single person at Gronder to her plan. He looks up immediately—bless him, so well trained—and after he slits the throat of one last Imperial solider, dutifully comes trotting over on his horse, hair flapping majestically in a way that makes Hilda suspect he grew it out specifically for that exact aesthetic.

Lorenz says, “Lady Goneril,” all grand as he takes her hand and hauls her up into his saddle in a well-practiced and frequently executed move that Claude had cheerfully nicknamed _Idiot One Rescues Idiot Two._ “So lovely to see you, dear. In a bit of a pickle?”

She cuffs him on the back of his significantly less stupid head as he laughs. She adores Lorenz—even when he’d been insufferable during their Academy days because _Flames_ she’d been just as bad—but his comedic timing is still shit. “Shut _up,_ Lorenz. Claude’s trying to fucking kill himself.”

Lorenz tips his head in an acknowledging gesture because honestly Claude doing something stupid and heroic that will statistically end with him dead in a ditch is kind of just par for the course when you’re under the banner of the Golden Deer. He wheels his horse around—Hilda can’t tell all his horses apart and but she’s pretty sure this one is named Dancer—and they go galloping off as Hilda explains the project she’d volunteered herself for that involves increasing Dimitri’s odds of survival while drastically lowering her own. Not that Hilda’s ever been great shakes at math or anything. Regardless, Lorenz is predictably unimpressed. And actually kinda pissed. 

“Have you been watching Dimitri at _all,_ Hilda?” Lorenz demands, somehow managing to impale an Imperial soldier, guide Dancer through a messy battle between Marianne and Linhardt, and sound like a scolding mother all at the same time.

Hilda rolls her eyes but pulls a javelin out of the stash of them tied to Dancer’s saddle and hurls it towards the fight to take out one of Linhardt’s battalion members. Linhardt snaps his head up as his companion crumples—pale face even paler against the blood spattered across it—to stare accusingly at her as she and Lorenz gallop off. Hilda only barely resists the urge to flip him off.

“No, Lorenz,” Hilda drawls back. “I’ve been _very busy_ following all of Claude’s _very detailed_ battle instructions.”

Lorenz scoffs, maneuvers Dancer through a complicated two-step to avoid getting skewered by a mounted Imperial solider.

“The _Duke_ should take his own advice,” he says, gesturing up at the sky where Claude is now flirting with the business end of Bernadetta’s bow as she’s firing at him from her spot atop the hill, being dutifully minded by a dozen Imperial solders. “I understand he feels… _strongly_ about Prince Dimitri, but—”

“They were sleeping together at Garreg Mach,” Hilda interrupts smoothly, rolling a javelin in her grip as she peers across at Bernadetta’s guard to decide which one’s going to lose their head while Lorenz lets out a very undignified _sputter_ of surprise at her revelation. “So like, that’s part of it.”

“They were _what?”_ Lorenz demands, a full octave higher than usual as Hilda takes her aim and launches the javelin at a guard who turned his back. It catches the chink in his shoulder guard and he goes down hard. Lorenz is apparently having trouble breathing.

Hilda pats his back. “Deep breathes, Lorenz, come on,” she tells him. “We gotta get to Dimitri before he gets to Edelgard.”

Lorenz deliberates, distracted as Leonie and Ingrid swoop low— _real_ fucking low, Hilda almost takes a hoof to the skull—lances at each other’s throats, and Hilda can’t see their expressions in the split second they spiral by but she can hear Leonie’s familiar shriek of _“shut up!”_ as they go so she can sort of guess how things are looking on the diplomacy front.

Hilda’s so busy tracking the dueling knights she startles when Lorenz pulls Dancer up short, sent scrabbling for a hold so she doesn’t just fully fucking fly off the damn thing, grabbing Lorenz’s stupid pointy shoulder plates and hauling herself up higher so she can _see—_

 _“Hm,”_ Lorenz humphs, which is about as dirty a diss as you can get from a noble as well-bred as their resident Count. “Speaking of Dukes.”

Ferdinand von Aegir— _Flames,_ Hilda even _thinks_ it in his voice—comes galloping across Gronder, lance glinting in the receding sun and his eyes very clearly set on one particular target.

Here’s a hint: it’s huge and blue and currently ravaging a group of Imperial soldiers.

“He means to attack Dimitri when his back is turned,” Lorenz murmurs, as Hilda takes a hearty whack at a nearby Imperial soldier who, like, thought she wasn’t fucking watching or something.

“Because all the Eagles are fucking _cowards,”_ Hilda spits back, kicking over the body of the now very dead Imperial who thought he was going to get the drop on the highest-ranking General in Claude’s fucking army—okay technically Lys ranks higher because she killed the Death Knight and all but like, Hilda has had to put up with so much of Claude’s shit that it has to have earned her a bit of brass at this point, and also she rocks the ceremonial armor that goes with it, _so._

Lorenz says, “We’ll take care of him together, buy Claude some time, protect Dimirti’s flank,” which all sounds _great_ to Hilda, and Lorenz kicks Dancer’s sides to get her moving—

A _scream_ rips out across Gronder—high and clear and so fucking _familiar_ that Hilda feels herself _ache_ with it—

 _“Mari,”_ Hilda gasps, whipping her head around so fast the joints in her neck crack painfully. She searches the battlefield for a flash of sky-blue but everything’s a fucking _wreck—_ all she catches in her brief look is Annette being flanked by Petra as she steadily loses her footing in in her bout with Hubert, Dorothea pressing in hard on Felix, magic flying _everywhere_. “Fuck, she was going at it with Linhardt—”

Lorenz says, “I’ll see to her,” his tone all smooth and formal even as his eyes promise a very long and torturous and painful death for the next person who so much as breathes in Marianne’s general direction. Hilda nods, gathering up Freikugel and preparing to bail off Dancer’s back.

Lorenz grips her hand so hard it hurts, just for a moment, looking back over his shoulder to catch her eyes.

“Be safe, Hilda,” he tells her, low and serious, and Hilda bobs her head once.

“Can’t die,” she jokes back, because her comedic timing is also shit but like she’s probably gonna be dead soon and she’s been saving this one for too long to not use it. “Someone’s gotta hang around to give a speech at your wedding about how fucking terrible your hair looked at the Academy.”

Lorenz’s eyes soften, because being a Deer means getting emotional over personal insults. These are Hilda’s people.

He snaps his fingers and flicks out his wrist, and Hilda watches as a bolt of lighting materializes out of nowhere to strike the ground just beside Ferdinand’s horse. It spooks _magnificently—_ rearing up as Ferdinand grapples for the reins, but Hilda’s already sending her last hand axe spinning for them, threading the needle to slice the leather straps in half without cleaving off Ferdinand’s hands although, like, Hilda wouldn’t have exactly wept over such a loss.

With nothing to hold him to his steed, Ferdinand takes a hard fall as Hilda slides off the saddle with a noticeable lack of grace. Lorenz urges Dancer to take a run at Ferdinand’s horse, and it turns tail to go galloping off while Lorenz wheels Dancer back around, riding hell-for-leather for Marianne with literal actual _murder_ in his eyes.

Hilda watches as Ferdinand gingerly picks himself off the ground, idly wondering how he looks more graceful pulling himself out of the mud after a fall than she does just climbing on and off a horse. Fucking horse people. She just doesn’t get them.

“Gotta say, Ferdie,” says Hilda, because the only thing she does better than bisect people is annoy the living shit out of them. “You’re a lot less scary without your pony.”

Ferdinand scoffs, pushing hair out of his eyes as he tosses a quick glance around, probably to ensure he is, in fact, very much alone.

“You certainly know how to make an entrance, my lady,” he says, and Hilda watches closely as he picks up his lance from where he’d dropped it during his fall. “I envied you for such drama at the Academy.”

Hilda says, “You _envied_ me because you thought I was fucking that stable hand you liked,” which somehow gets Ferdinand to color despite the fact that it was five fucking years ago and they’re both adults about to duel to the fucking death or whatever. “Which, like, I _wasn’t,_ by the way. I just sweet-talked him whenever I was on stall mucking duty.”

Ferdinand actually _smiles_ —a small, wry thing. “Your dedication to laziness is admirable, my lady,” he tells her, even as he steadies the grip on his lance. “You’ll have to teach me your ways—I’d be delighted to be your student in the matter.”

“Oh, shut the fuck _up,”_ Hilda snaps.

He meets her first strike as expected—a high overhead swing he catches against the stock of his lance. They stare at each other past their crossed weapons.

“It isn’t _you_ I’m after, Hilda,” Ferdinand grits out, finally dropping the _my lady_ horseshit. She bears down harder with Freikugel, watching as his proud, handsome features distort with the effort of keeping her axe off his neck. “Stand aside—we don’t have to fight.”

“Here’s the thing though,” says Hilda, taking a very specific kind of pleasure in the contrast of her unhurried, unbothered tone against Ferdinand’s labored breathing. “We _definitely_ have to fight. For, like, a _hundred_ reasons.”

Ferdinand bares his teeth, but his arms tremble under the stress of Hilda’s brute fucking strength, and he’s pulling away a moment later, forcing Hilda back as he sweeps out with the spearhead.

Hilda bats his lance away with the flat of her axe easily, hardly feeling the reverberations up her arm. He’s got reach, but _ten_ of him couldn’t overpower her on her worst day. He’s outmatched and he knows it.

“You don’t wanna do this, Ferdinand,” Hilda warns, teeth set so hard she swears her whole jaw’s just going to crack wide open. She spins Freikugel in her hands, readjusting her grip. Her arms are burning, but she’s too angry to care. “You don’t stand a chance against me off your horse, so just get out of here, okay? I have _shit_ to do and you didn’t make the list, so _fuck off.”_

Ferdinand draws himself up to full height—his armor and hair are way more impressive than Lorenz’s but she doesn’t think telling him so will be enough to sway him to the Alliance’s side and also like, Hilda’s too loyal to their dear Count Gloucester besides.

“He _must_ be put down, Hilda,” says Ferdinand, like Dimitri’s a fucking _dog_ or something. “What loyalty do you have to Faerghus anyway?”

And oh. _Oh._ Was that ever the wrong fucking thing to say.

“You wanna talk to me about _loyalty?”_ Hilda yells, voice actually fucking _cracking._ Goddess she’s mad. Flames fucking take her. “I’m sorry—which of us stormed Garreg Mach? Which of us played on the same team as the literal fucking _Death Knight?”_

Ferdinand’s eyes narrow, hardening with real anger—it still doesn’t come _close_ to the look Hilda had seen in Claude’s eyes when they’d watched the Monastery burn in the distance as they’d fled back to Alliance territory years ago.

Hilda levels Freikugel. Ferdinand eyes it, but doesn’t move.

“Here’s the thing, _Duke von Aegir,”_ Hilda says, low, cruel—her voice is a knife twisting deeper in a wound. She hardly recognizes it. “The Eagles? You aren’t going to win this thing. You just _aren’t.”_

“And I suppose the _Deer_ are better equipped?” Ferdinand asks, souring her House name until it stings like a slur. Saints, Hilda could kill him for just _that,_ and she draws back her axe arm, ready to just fucking let him _have_ it—

An arrow zips by—so close Hilda swears she feels the fletching slice her cheek—to stick right in a chink in Ferdinand’s armor Hilda couldn’t have found if you’d given her three days and a pair of fucking glasses. Ferdinand staggers, slightly, and Hilda scrambles away, looking for the familiar shadow of Silver but only finding the Professor—the Goddess-damned fucking _Professor,_ alive, apparently, because nobody just stays _dead_ anymore—standing atop the hill in Bernadetta’s place, bow in hand, eyes seeming to fucking _glow_ out from the shadows of her grim expression.

She looks very distinctly like a woman who had seen death and hadn’t been impressed.

Hilda clambers up the hill, wary as the Professor just stares, like, fully dead-eyed down at Ferdinand as he breathes deep and shallow, arrow lodged in his side. She’s an even bigger wreck up close—expression so cold and tortured that Hilda actually tightens her hold on Freikugel. Bernadetta is nowhere to be seen. Hilda chooses not to think too hard about that, presently.

Hilda says, “Professor,” all light and delicate, trying to call on the ghost of who _Hilda Valentine Goneril_ used to be. The Professor doesn’t blink—the Sword of the Creator is glowing at her side, pulsing like it has a heartbeat. She’s, like, three seconds away from just fully snapping her bow in half, she’s gripping it so hard.

“I tried,” she whispers, lips never moving, words numb. Hilda freezes—her tone is petrifying. The Professor just keeps _staring._ “Every time, you killed him. I’ve turned it back a hundred times but you _still…”_

Hilda has absolutely no idea what’s happening, or what the Professor is saying, or _trying_ to say, or where the hell she’s been all battle or why she’s even fucking _here_ and not dead in a Goddess-damned ditch somewhere, but she _does_ know that Claude is about thirty seconds away from getting his head chopped off and _that_ takes priority, so she dutifully shoves every question and curiosity she has about whatever the fuck-all is going on with the Blue Lions’ old teacher firmly into the drawer in her mind clearly marked _don’t think about it_.

Hilda says, “Thanks, I guess,” because she's a Lady of a Noble House and knows her fucking manners, thank you, and then just _books_ it. If the Professor wants to stand there staring like a fucking fish at Ferdinand’s not even dead body all Goddess-damned day muttering absolute _nonsense,_ that’s her business. Hilda has places to be and Dukes to save and Emperors to dismember and Princes to scream at because _fuck_ was Dimitri ever going to get an earful.

Claude is grounded atop the hill—Hilda doesn’t know where Silver is but she does know that Claude rarely dismounts out of choice in battle, so that’s not, like, a _great_ sign, all told—fighting in horrifyingly close quarters with Edelgard, who somehow looks way shorter than Hilda remembers. Not the fucking point, obviously, but like. Still. Get some heels or something.

“It doesn’t have to _be_ like this, Edelgard!” Claude is insisting as he fights to keep Edelgard’s axe off his fucking _neck—_ the glow of both their Relics baths their conflict with a faint red light that washes over Claude and makes him look so bloodied and beaten that Hilda almost hauls off and just hurls Freikugel the last few yards because _fuck—_

“Tell that to _Dimitri!”_ Edelgard snarls, pulling her axe back and spinning it around to try and take a swing at a new angle and _Flames, Saints, **Goddess,**_ Hilda isn’t fucking _fast enough—_

Dimitri, meanwhile, has just forced his way past the last few members of what Hilda assumes was once Edelgard’s battalion, and starts charging up the hill towards Claude and Edelgard and Hilda digs deeper, pushes _harder—_

Claude snaps, “Stand _down,_ Edelgard!” as he catches her strike on Failnaught’s curve. “I never believed you were a warmonger, but if you won’t even _try_ and negotiate—”

 _“Negotiate?”_ Hilda’s never heard Edelgard’s voice go so shrill—has never seen her regality slip so far. She looks fucking _distraught,_ and her eyes keep darting over to where Hilda’s storming in— _past_ her, actually, to the fucking _Professor_ who still hasn’t _moved—_

Then Dimitri’s _there_ and Hilda’s still yards away but she can see Claude instinctively _relax—_ melting in the presence of his Kingdom Prince, just like always—while Edelgard steps back, guard up, faced now with a war on two fronts and Hilda never paid much attention during Manuela’s optional classics lectures that Lorenz and Marianne always dragged her to but it feels like some dramatic _fucking_ irony—

“Dimitri,” Claude says, and Hilda cannot for the life of her understand how he kept his _continental_ crush on this boy a secret because _Saints_ he couldn’t be more _obvious_ if he dropped to a knee and pulled out a _ring—_

But Dimitri doesn’t stop. He doesn’t blush or go comically stock-still or start to fidget with the clasp of his Blue Lions mantel or do any of the things he did when he’d cross Claude’s path at Garreg Mach because he _isn’t_ Dimitri anymore, and Hilda doesn’t know who the fuck he is or what happened to him but there is not a flicker of affection or concern or joy or even fucking _understanding_ anywhere in his features—just wild and vicious _fury—_ and the look on Claude’s face when he realizes breaks Hilda’s fucking _heart—_

But then it’s gone—stuffed neatly behind his Duke von Riegan mask—and just as Hilda crests the hill he seems to make some kind of choice, and takes a step, puts himself between Dimitri and Edelgard, his back to the Emperor like the big fucking stupid martyr he is and Hilda is _right fucking **there—**_

Up close, Hilda can see Dimitri’s missing an eye—eyelid shut tight, ugly and ruined with scar tissue, stained with old blood, untreated wounds, half-hidden by the wild mess of tangles that she guesses is his hair, but _Goddess_ what fucking _happened_ to this boy?

 _“Dima,”_ Claude whispers, so low and fucking tender that Hilda is seized with the stupidest fucking desire to _look away_ because this feels so private and _raw_ and Dimitri—Dimitri _hesitates—_

And Hilda really, honestly, for one moment thinks: this is it. This is where Dimitri raises his lance to Claude’s cause, this is where the Alliance and the Kingdom join forces. This is where Edelgard surrenders and the war ends and everything is put to rest: right here, right now at Gronder fucking Field.

Time _melts._ The word goes vertigo, pushing and pulling at the same time. Hilda watches as Dimitri’s lance arm rises, higher, and higher still—

 _“Areadbhar,”_ Claude had told her a hundred years ago back at the Academy, when she’d sat shoulder-to-shoulder with him with his blankets tossed over their heads like a fort, well past midnight, pressed in on all sides on his bed by books about Faerghus he’d nicked from the library.

Hilda had taken the book from him, twisted it, titled her head, frowned harder at the detailed sketch of House Blaiddyd’s Relic.

 _“Kinda looks like a hand,”_ she’d said, wiggling her fingers at him just to make him laugh.

 _“At least Areadbhar is easy to **say,”**_ Claude’d said back, still grinning. _“Unlike **Freakagull.”**_

Hilda had laughed so hard she’d snorted, bumping shoulders with Claude and almost knocking him off the bed.

 _“It’s **Freikugel,** you weenie,”_ she’d told him. _“I don’t care how cute you think Dimitri is—you can’t know how to say **his** Relic and not **mine.** Have some loyalty, Mr. Leader Man.”_

Claude’s answering smile had shamed fucking daybreak. _“Fear the Deer,”_ he’d said, without an _ounce_ of irony, holding up his fingers on the sides of his head like little horns and that time Hilda _had_ pushed him out of bed and _Saints_ they were laughing way too hard, someone was going to complain—

Areadbhar is fucking _wicked_ in the sunlight—glints like a gallows chain and Hilda knows a killing blow when she sees one. Claude won’t move— _can’t._ They’re all bound here, to this moment, as Dimitri brings his ancestral lance down, down, _down—_

Hilda _hurls_ herself at Dimitri—just fucking grits her teeth and _barrels_ into him. She’s small and he’s fucking enormous but she’s got a nifty upper hand in the form of the all-consuming _fury_ currently burning her inside-out, leaving her feeling like she’s liable to set whatever she touches on fucking _fire._

He grunts as she hits him, losing his footing and sending them both tumbling backwards down the hill—she kicks what she thinks is Areadbhar out of reach and hisses in turn when Dimitri rips Freikugel clean out of her grasp so hard it leaves her hands _stinging—_

 _“Get off,”_ Dimitri growls—he sounds more like a dog than some fucking _dogs_ do, Saints save her—and Hilda responds by just throwing her elbow wildly in the general direction of his face as they just keep rolling over and over each other down the hill, picking up nicks and cuts and bruises until finally they end up sprawled out, Dimitri on top, Hilda crushed beneath him and _Flames_ she can’t _breathe—_

She has one wild moment to take in Dimitri’s face where it looms above her—he looks _horrific,_ more dead than the fucking Professor had looked, like maybe he actually _had_ died and it just didn’t take, or maybe it _did_ and this is what was left.

Then he’s yanking a knife off his belt and Hilda squints as the blade catches the fading light, all her anger surging back because how fucking _dare_ he think she’s going to die like this, and then there’s a commotion at the top of the hill and Hilda cranes her neck as far as she can, watching as Claude and Edelgard have a short, astoundingly unimpressive wrestling match that ends with Edelgard briefly throwing him off and flinging her arm out at where Hilda and Dimitri are tangled up at the base of the hill, right on the edge of a steep drop-off, absolute sitting fucking ducks as darkness gathers around the stark white of Edelgard’s glove and _Flames fucking take her why is it always **magic—**_

She’s aiming for Dimitri, obviously, and Hilda may or may not be collateral, but she assumes Emperor Edelgard isn’t the kind of person who, like, misses, and also it seems the only thing holding up the diplomacy party was Dimitri, so as long as he’s out of the picture, they’d probably just patch Hilda up and be on their merry way, so maybe Hilda should just let this happen—Dimitri’s not _innocent,_ he was two seconds away from putting his Relic through Claude a fucking _heartbeat_ ago, so why _shouldn’t_ Hilda just let Edelgard have him—?

Because Claude. Because if Claude is willing to hear out Edelgard’s side of things, of course he’s going to want to hear out Dimitri’s. And he _loves_ Dimitri, is the fucking thing—really, genuinely, Hilda _knows_ this—but Dimitri isn’t _right_ and Hilda doesn’t know why or if it’s permanent or if she can get him to snap the fuck out of it but she knows Edelgard won’t see it that way, and a spell Hilda’s only ever seen Lysithea cast starts to form around the Emperor, and Hilda sets her jaw—

She’s a Goneril—the blood of _legend._ She walks in the image of one of the Ten fucking Elites. She’s the last Lady of her House and the War Master of the Leicester Alliance.

She’s Claude von Riegan’s best fucking _friend._

Two spiked half-circles shine brilliantly in the setting sun as Hilda’s Crest rouses itself from deep within her bones, and for one brief moment, she _feels_ it, like Goneril’s own strength is flowing through her, and _fuck_ maybe those classics lessons rubbed off on her more than she thought but she feels fucking _killer—_

Hilda reaches up, wraps her arms around Dimitri and pulls him down in a crushing hug, her cheek mashed up against his filthy, matted hair, his armor digging painfully into her sternum. He struggles, but her Crest shines brighter, and she leeches off that strength just enough to push herself into a roll, dragging Dimitri off the edge with her as Edelgard’s spell finally forms—

They drop.

 _“Hilda!”_ Claude screams, so loud and painful its like the sound had been ripped from his fucking throat, but Hilda just keeps falling, falling, _falling—_

**Author's Note:**

> oh boy here we go
> 
> so this is an idea that fell into my head a while back when I was searching for something that would let me write a fun, loose, kinda goofy narrative. if you’ve followed my stuff you know my favorite thing to do in fic is take important characters, strip them of all the things that make them important, and put them in really stupid situations to see what they do, so that’s kind of what this is.
> 
> I had high hopes to sit on this fic for, like, many many many months and post it all as one big one-shot but that just isn’t going to happen lol. I haven’t been able to crank out fics like that since college like I just do not have the _willpower_
> 
> also I know things seem real anti-Black Eagles and Edelgard but that’s because this is from Hilda’s perspective, and Hilda doesn’t know shit right now. her view will soften eventually when her and Dima team up to do some very bad detective work. I love Edelgard!!! no hate here and also none of the students die if you were worried about that. good ending bc I Said So.
> 
> hope you like it. I liked writing it!
> 
> find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/reduxwriter) (sometimes) and [tumblr](https://mdwstduch.tumblr.com/) (sometimes) you can always drop me a line or shoot me an @ but please bear with me I am trying to be on social media less so I can't promise when I'll get to your message also I'm bad at texting like my irl friends so it's just something I need to work on broadly in general THANKS
> 
> you can read more of my FE3H fic [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works?utf8=%E2%9C%93&work_search%5Bsort_column%5D=revised_at&work_search%5Bother_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bexcluded_tag_names%5D=&work_search%5Bcrossover%5D=&work_search%5Bcomplete%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_from%5D=&work_search%5Bwords_to%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_from%5D=&work_search%5Bdate_to%5D=&work_search%5Bquery%5D=fire+emblem&work_search%5Blanguage_id%5D=&commit=Sort+and+Filter&user_id=MidwesternDuchess)
> 
> title is from a poem by the indomitable Chen Chen "I'm not a religious person but" which you should absolutely read [here](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58152/im-not-a-religious-person-but/)
> 
> also just to make everything crystal clear: idk at what point in time you may be reading this but if it's anytime around the summer/fall of 2020, support the protests in each and every way you can. and even if it isn't the summer of 2020: blm, acab, fuck TERFs. thanks.


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